Don’t Peak in High School

S OM E T I M E S T E E N AG E girls ask me for advice about what

they should be doing if they want a career like mine one day.
There are basically two ways to get where I am: (1) learn a pro-
vocative dance and put it on YouTube; (2) convince your parents
to move to Orlando and homeschool you until you get cast on a
kids’ show, or do what I did, which is (3) stay in school and be a
respectful and hardworking wallflower, and go to an accredited
non-online university.
Teenage girls, please don’t worry about being super popular
in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the
best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the
second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference
your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you
look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams
character with nothing else going on in her current life. What
I’ve noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high
school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it’s so
wonderfully fair.
I was never the lead in the play. I don’t think I went to a single
party with alcohol at it. No one offered me pot. It wasn’t until I
was sixteen that I even knew marijuana and pot were the same
thing. I didn’t even learn this from a cool friend; I gleaned it

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 32 • Mindy Kaling

from a syndicated episode of 21 Jump Street. My parents didn’t

let me do social things on weeknights because weeknights were
for homework, and maybe an episode of The X-Files if I was being
a good kid (X-Files was on Friday night), and on extremely rare oc-
casions I could watch Seinfeld (Thursday, a school night), if I had
just aced my PSATs or something.
It is easy to freak out as a sensitive teenager. I always felt I
was missing out because of the way the high school experi-
ence was dramatized in television and song. For every realistic
My So- Called Life, there were ten 90210s or Party of Fives, where
a twenty-something Luke Perry was supposed to be just a typi-
cal guy at your high school. If Luke Perry had gone to my high
school, everybody would have thought, “What’s the deal with
this brooding greaser? Is he a narc?” But that’s who Hollywood
put forth as “just a dude at your high school.”
In the genre of “making you feel like you’re not having an
awesome American high school experience,” the worst offender
is actually a song: John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane.”
It’s one of those songs—like Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”—
that everyone knows all the words to without ever having cho-
sen to learn them. I’ve seen people get incredibly pumped when
this song comes on; I once witnessed a couple request it four
times in a row at Johnny Rockets and belt it while loudly clap-
ping their hands above their heads, so apparently it is an an-
them of some people’s youth. I think across America, as I type
this, there are high school couples who strive to be like Jack and
Diane from that song. Just hangin’ out after school, makin’ out
at the Tastee Freez, sneakin’ beers into their cars, without a care
in the world. Just two popular, idle, all-American white kids,
having a blast.
The world created in “Jack and Diane” is maybe okay-
charming because, like, all right, that kid Jack is going to get
shipped off to Vietnam and there was going to be a whole part

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 Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? • 33

two of the story when he returned as some traumatized, disil-

lusioned vet. The song is only interesting to me as the dreamy
first act to a much more interesting Born on the Fourth of July–type
story.
As it is, I guess I find “Jack and Diane” a little disgusting.
As a child of immigrant professionals, I can’t help but no-
tice the wasteful frivolity of it all. Why are these kids not home
doing their homework? Why aren’t they setting the table for din-
ner or helping out around the house? Who allows their kids to
hang out in parking lots? Isn’t that loitering?
I wish there was a song called “Nguyen and Ari,” a little ditty
about a hardworking Vietnamese girl who helps her parents with
the franchised Holiday Inn they run, and does homework in the
lobby, and Ari, a hardworking Jewish boy who does volunteer
work at his grandmother’s old-age home, and they meet after
school at Princeton Review. They help each other study for the
SATs and different AP courses, and then, after months of study-
ing, and mountains of flashcards, they kiss chastely upon hear-
ing the news that they both got into their top college choices.
This is a song teens need to inadvertently memorize. Now that’s
a song I’d request at Johnny Rockets!
In high school, I had fun in my academic clubs, watching
movies with my girlfriends, learning Latin, having long, pro-
tracted, unrequited crushes on older guys who didn’t know me,
and yes, hanging out with my family. I liked hanging out with
my family! Later, when you’re grown up, you realize you never
get to hang out with your family. You pretty much have only
eighteen years to spend with them full time, and that’s it. So,
yeah, it all added up to a happy, memorable time. Even though I
was never a star.
Because I was largely overlooked at school, I watched every-
one like an observant weirdo, not unlike Eugene Levy’s charac-
ter Dr. Allan Pearl in Waiting for Guffman, who “sat next to the

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 34 • Mindy Kaling

class clown, and studied him.” But I did that with everyone. It
has helped me so much as a writer; you have no idea.
I just want ambitious teenagers to know it is totally fi ne to
be quiet, observant kids. Besides being a delight to your parents,
you will find you have plenty of time later to catch up. So many
people I work with—famous actors, accomplished writers—were
overlooked in high school. Be like Allan Pearl. Sit next to the
class clown and study him. Then grow up, take everything you
learned, and get paid to be a real-life clown, unlike whatever un-
exciting thing the actual high school class clown is doing now.
The chorus of “Jack and Diane” is: Oh yeah, life goes on, long
after the thrill of living is gone.
Are you kidding me? The thrill of living was high school? Come
on, Mr. Cougar Mellencamp. Get a life.

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 Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
(Or, How I Made My First Real Friend)

I N N I N T H G R A DE I had a secret friend. Her name was

Mavis Lehrman. Mavis lived a few streets away from me in a
Tudor-style house that every Halloween her parents made look
like the evil witch’s cottage from Hansel and Gretel. (This is amaz-
ing, by the way. It behooves anyone who lives in a Tudor house to
make it look like a witch cottage once in a while.) The Lehrmans
were a creative and eccentric family who my parents deemed
good people. Mavis was my Saturday friend, which meant she
came over to my house Saturday and we spent the afternoon
watching television together.
Mavis and I bonded over comedy. It didn’t matter if it was
good or bad; at fourteen, we didn’t really know the difference.
We were comedy nerds, and we just loved watching and talk-
ing about it nonstop. We holed up in my family’s TV room with
blankets and watched hours of Comedy Central. Keep in mind
this is not the Comedy Central of today, with the abundance of
great shows like South Park, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report.
This was the early ’90s, where you had to really search around
to find decent stuff to watch. We’d start with the good shows,
Dr. Katz, Kids in the Hall, or Saturday Night Live reruns, but when
those were over, we were lucky if there was some dated movie

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 Best Friend Rights and Responsibilities

F OR A L MO S T E IGH T years I lived with my best friends in

either a cramped college dorm room or a small Brooklyn
apartment. Normally these are the circumstances that drive
one roommate to get engaged to some random guy super fast
because she is so annoyed with her living situation. We managed
it well, however, because we maintained an informal best friend
code of conduct. I’ve outlined its most vital aspects here.

I CAN BORROW ALL YOUR CLOTHES

Anything in your closet, no matter how fancy, is co-owned by

me, your best friend. I can borrow it for as long as I want. If I get
something on it or lose it, I should make all good faith attempts
to get it cleaned or buy you a new one, but I don’t need to do
that, and you still have to love me. If I ruin something of yours
and don’t replace it, you’re allowed to talk shit about me to our
other friends for one calendar year. That’s it. Then you have to
get over it. One stipulation to my borrowing your clothes is that
you have to have worn the item at least once before I borrow it.
I’m not a monster.

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 Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? • 81

WE SLEEP IN THE SAME BED

If we’re on a trip or if our boyfriends are away, and there’s a bed

bigger than a twin, we’re partnering up. It is super weird for us
not to share a bed. How else will we talk until we fall asleep?

I MUST BE 100 PERCENT HONEST ABOUT

HOW YOU LOOK, BUT GENTLE

Your boyfriend is never going to tell you that your skirt is too
tight and riding up too high on you. In fact, you shouldn’t even
have asked him, poor guy. He wants to have sex with you no
matter how pudgy you are. I am the only person besides your
mom who has the right (and responsibility) to tell you that. I
should never be overly harsh when something doesn’t look good
on you, because I know you are fragile about this, and so am I.
I will employ the gentle, vague expression “I’m not crazy about
that on you,” which should mean to you “Holy shit, take that
off, that looks terrible!” I owe it to you to give feedback like a
cattle prod: painful but quick.

I CAN DITCH YOU, WITHIN REASON

I can ditch you to hang out with a guy but only if that possibil-
ity has been discussed and getting-a-ride-home practicalities
have been worked out, prior to the event. In return, I need to
talk about you a lot with that guy so he knows how much I love
you.

I WILL TAKE CARE OF YOUR KID IF YOU DIE

I can’t even write about this, it’s too sad. But yes, I will do that.
And you will have one awesome little kid who hears endless sto-

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 82 • Mindy Kaling

ries about how amazing and beautiful and perfect you were. In-
cidentally, your kid will grow up loving Indian food.

I WILL NURSE YOU BACK TO HEALTH

If you are crippled with pain because of a UTI, I need to haul

ass to CVS to get you some medicine, fast. I should also try to
pick up a fashion magazine and the candy you like, because
distracting you from your pain is part of nursing you back to
health.

WE WILL TRADE OFF BEING SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

CHAIR FOR OUR OUTINGS

On trips together, I promise to man up and be the person who

drives the rental car sometimes, or uses my credit card and has
people pay me back later. Someone needs to check on Yelp to see
what the good brunch place is. Neither of us gets to be the prin-
cess all the time. I get that.

I WILL KEEP YOUR FAVORITE FEMININE HYGIENE

PRODUCT AT MY HOUSE

Even though no one uses maxipads anymore, like you do, weirdo,
I will keep a box at my house for when you come over.

SAME WITH YOUR CONTACT LENS SOLUTION

I can’t believe you won’t get Lasik already. You can afford it. I
know you read someone went blind from it, but that was like
twenty years ago. Not getting Lasik at this point is like being
that girl in 2006 who didn’t have a cell phone.

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 Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? • 83

I WILL TRY TO LIKE YOUR BOYFRIEND FIVE TIMES

This is a fair number of times to hang out with your boyfriend

and withhold judgment.

WHEN I TAKE A SHOWER AT YOUR PLACE, I WON’T

DROP THE TOWEL ON THE FLOOR

Your home isn’t a hotel. I forget sometimes because you make it

so comfortable for me.

IF YOU’RE DEPRESSED, I WILL BE THERE FOR YOU

As everyone knows, depressed people are some of the most bor-

ing people in the world. I know this because when I was de-
pressed, people fled. Except my best friends.
I will be there for you during your horrible break-up, or get-
ting fired from your job, or if you’re just having a bad couple of
months or year. I will hate it and find you really tedious, but I
promise I won’t abandon you.

IF OUR PHONE CONVERSATION GETS

DISCONNECTED, THERE’S NO NEED TO CALL BACK

I get it. You get it. We take forever getting off the phone anyway.
This was a blessing.

I WILL HATE AND RE-LIKE PEOPLE FOR YOU

But you can’t get mad if I can’t keep track. Robby? Don’t we hate
him? No, we love him. Okay, okay. Sorry.

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 84 • Mindy Kaling

IT IS OKAY TO TAKE ME FOR GRANTED

I know when you fall in love with someone that you will com-
pletely forget about me. That hurts my feelings, but it is okay.
Please try to remember to text me, if you can, if you know I have
something going on in my life, like a work promotion or some-
thing.

NO TWO PEOPLE ARE BETTER THAN US

We fucking rock. No one can beat us.

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